The epidemic of pre-diabetes, obesity, and diabetes along with a host of digestive ills has resulted in many people taking some extreme low or no carb dietary measures to either reverse or prevent these health problems. It’s great to be pro-active but a good maintenance diet does include good carbs and going without them can create new health problems and failure to see good results long-term. If we focus on blood sugar levels we may miss the fact that it is insulin resistance that is causing poor blood sugar control and insulin resistance is caused by inflammation. To complicate matters, other factors besides dietary can cause inflammation. The key seems to be reducing inflammation in order to have insulin function normally. Common sense and a lot of what we already know about inflammation can help us sort all this out. We are here to help with the sorting out if you are confused, but here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- A good balance between carbs, protein and fat has been part of traditional diets that supported good health for generations across the world. Quality is the determining factor for whether foods containing a balance of these macronutrients are health promoting or not but the condition/function of the gut is key also.
- Exposure to toxins/chemicals from our food, water and air has greatly increased over the last 100 years or so and this has resulted in an abundance of poor quality foods. For example, glyphosate exposure from desiccation of our grains and legumes since the 1990’s has sky-rocketed. Also, seed oils that flooded the food supply with omega-6 fatty acids (most of which are damaged into free-radicals by processing) and were foisted on the unsuspecting public about 100 years ago and have only increased since then. Another example, mercury from coal-burning plants ends up in the fish we eat.
- These toxins/chemicals cause leaky gut and a bad mix of microbes growing in the gut. They also lodge in the cells (they often store in fat) and lymph tissues. Once the gut is compromised even the best quality carbs can make digestion worse because bad microbes are making irritating by-products from these carbs and they get readily absorbed into the blood and distributed throughout the body causing further health problems.
- So the solution is to rebuild the gut with the best quality foods and supplements and with easily digested low carb content initially. With time and as tolerated, more good quality carbs can be introduced all while reducing exposure to as many chemicals as possible.
- There are lots of measures that can be taken to help the body cleanse itself from modern-day toxic exposures. Give us a call to schedule a nutrition consult if you would like help on your road to better health.
